Damaged At Best
by Sassassin
Summary: She had been dancing in the ruins of her old life, burning her toes on the smoldering wreckage and ready to be swallowed up whole. - AU
1. Chapter 1

**Tagging: **Nikita, Birkhoff, Owen, Ryan, Roan, Jaden, Amanda.  
**Ships: **Mikita for now.  
**Rating: **M. (For all sorts of mature shenanigans; violence, death, dark themes and sexual hijinks.)

Here I am again! It's been nine days since I finished **Ever Nor Never Goodbye**, and I honestly couldn't stay away from writing another multi-chapter story. In fact, I'll be uploading another one in a matter of hours. For the longest time I couldn't decide what I was going to write, so I decided I'd be writing two! (Because I can.)

If you're new to my writing, hey! Welcome! Enjoy the ride. I warn you in advance: I am quite sadistic to my characters. Thank you for taking interest in me!

If you're already familiar with me, hey! Welcome back! I love you lots and loads.

Now on to the story. I hope you'll all enjoy what I've got in store for you this time. :)

* * *

There is something fundamentally wrong with working on a Sunday.

Nikita sits slouched in her chair, feet propped up on her desk, paper cup in the hand that still has chocolate clinging to the digits—she didn't _choose _to conform to stereotypes; coffee and donuts would be irresistibly delicious even if she weren't a cop, damn-fucking-skippy.

And it's Birkhoff's fault anyway.

In spite of the coffee machine having been brewing non-stop for the past hour, the office has yet to fully wake up. They're all small eyes and lazy yawns, idly flicking through paperwork and halfway back to sleep. They closed the blinds over the tall windows in the ancient red brick walls, but it doesn't stop the sounds of the world from filtering in.

The clock slowly ticks up to nine am.

She has been thinking about all the reasons why no one should be allowed to work on a Sunday for the past forty minutes, and she has quite the list. Not that Lieutenant Fletcher will listen... "Crime doesn't stop just because God rested on Sunday," he has said _numerous _times.

She used to not mind that her job extended to the weekends, that she never had genuine days off, just an afternoon here and there. But Michael...

She sucks the remnants of her breakfast from her fingers and groans.

Across from her, on the opposite side of two desks shoved back-to-back, Birkhoff rolls his eyes and mutters, "Not again."

Nikita raises an eyebrow, tilting her feet so she can look between them. Her partner levels her a steady gaze through round glasses.

"What?"

"Nikki, you do this every time."

She huffs. Silence follows for a full minute, silence but the sputtering of the machine in the corner and the muffled noises of a department that seems to be a lot less zombie at this time a day.

Then Birkhoff stands up, dropping his tablet on top of her desk and grazing his fingers along her bare shins before sitting back. "Look, I know Mikey's been giving you a lot of crap lately—definitely gets him in the running for the 'worst fiancé of the year' award, if you ask me... But you gotta leave that at home, man. You can't let his bitch boy problems ruin this for you. You _love _your job."

She sighs, a tired smile quirking the corners of her mouth up. "Guess you're right." A beat later, she adds, "I hate it when you're right."

"Joke's on you for taking years to get over it."

"Joke's on you when they find you and your smart ass in a ditch."

"Babe, you can't handle this ass."

"Oh really now? That's not—"

Their bickering is interrupted by a sudden "_Donuts_?!" from the open entrance doors and in walks Caroline, carrying a tray of veggie shakes and brown-bagged lunches. Her blue eyes are narrowed at Nikita, and she immediately sits up straight, sneaker-covered feet landing on the floor with a thud.

"I'm sorry?" she squeaks.

Suddenly the office bustles with activity, printers spewing out pages, phones being torn off their hooks and numbers pushed in hastily. Caroline might not be of a higher rank than them, but her presence works even better than Fletcher's does. She's like a mother to them, and no one wants to disappoint her...

She works most effectively on Nikita though. After all, Cece's her _actual _mother.

(Adoptive mother, but who cares for technicalities?)

Food is put down in front of her, Nikita looks up with big eyes. "You'll make a healthy person out of me one day, Cece," she mutters, tip of her shoe scuffing against the floor.

She feels herself grow smaller under her mother's gaze, scrutinizing and a little bit judgmental. In her mind she hears old discussions about how she's been slacking with her nutrition for the last three—six—how many months? Her mother means well, and any other time they'd be joking at the expense of one of her colleagues: Owen is nursing a hangover at his desk in the corner, it would've been reason enough; instead, Birkhoff has put her in a precarious position.

He gets her out of it, too. He makes a wide gesture of putting the phone down and pulls Nikita up to her feet. "We've been summoned."

She pecks her mother's cheek and then ducks underneath her arm, finding her footing as she runs towards the door. "But today is not that day," she casts over her shoulder, and then she's gone.

Liquid relief fills her veins with a warmth that spreads to the very tips of her body when she slumps against the elevator wall, the doors closing firmly shut. "Saved by the B."

"You don't have me to thank. 147 at First Baptist."

She should think about that, about the sighting of a person with a gun (aka, a code 147) at a _church_, out of all places, but instead she thinks about what's been on her mind all day. "He wants a kid."

Birkhoff's lips purse together to stifle his laughter. His shoulders shake with the unreleased sound, and her glaring pins him to the surface.

"I'm serious. He wakes me up and goes, 'I want to have a baby with you', like, dude, what the _fuck_!?" She pulls an elastic band from her shorts' pocket and goes about tying her hair up, shaking her head as she continues. "As if we haven't had an argument about this a _thousand _times before."

"So he does it before work, _again_?"

"Exactly! I'm not a morning person to begin with, but lately he seems to get joy out of ruining my mood completely before I've even gotten showered. He wants to get married soon, get the whole family to come down to Detroit and... I don't know, he's just so _frustrating _sometimes."

"Just remember he's kept up with your shit for a while now, and he loves you, and all that shit."

"Sometimes it sucks that defending him is in your besties contract."

"I know, right?"

Nikita flops into the passenger's side of Birkhoff's car, pulling her side arm out of its holster to put it in her lap. Her fingers run across the barrel absently as she listens to debrief over the radio. Traffic whirls around them, and she plays a game of 'find a car without any dents' to rid her mind from her personal life's frustrations.

There's nothing as distracting as those, she knows from experience, so she's really trying. It's difficult but she pulls it off at least decent enough that by the time they park under the willow trees of a nearby block her fiancé is only the third thing on her mind, after musing about who'd be running around with a gun nearby a church and how she was going to make things right with Cece.

"N-Squared, target's on the move." Owen's voice sounds static on the radio. Birkhoff would usually mess with the radio settings until the sound is crystal clear, but they don't have the time. They both slip out of the car quickly, pushing a Comm into their ear as they start running towards the building that towers over everything in their sight.

"Talk to me, Owen," Nikita commands, fingers tightening around the handle of her gun. It feels familiar against her palm, the right kind of cold and heavy.

"Two o'clock. Armed with a rifle. Very dangerous. He seems to be headed inside, so proceed with caution but intercept before he can mess up mass."

"We have a poet among us," she quips to Birkhoff, who grins quickly before he goes all serious on her. That's her cue to sprint, eyes flickering across the space until they lock on a tall man sneaking through the shadows cast by the church.

Shit.

She knows that man. The smell of acid and burning flesh fills her throat so vividly it makes her choke. Every time she blinks she sees his face in front of her, and she swears she hears his agonized screaming ring through her ears.

Roan.

He got away last time. She's not going to make that same mistake again.

Her body tilts forward slightly as she goes the fastest she possibly can. Wind whips her hair back. The hilt of her dagger digs into her ribs.

A shout. In her Comm. Owen.

Birkhoff ducks and avoids a bullet.

Nikita leaps forward, onto Roan. Knocks him to the ground. Slams her elbow between two of his ribs. Takes enjoyment from the sound of bones breaking.

Suddenly she's on her back. His eyes are cold. Ice cold. Ice.

She shivers when the tip of his gun prods against her chest bone.

Stupid.

She's so stupid.

Screaming. The crowd of church-goers dissipates.

Birkhoff pounds the underside of his gun against Roan's jaw. He rolls off, and Nikita lunges at him.

A shot.

The pain pierces through her abdomen. It squeezes every bit of oxygen out of her. Her head swims in an ache that splits through her.

Her breathing slows down. She chokes. Warm liquid pools around her waist. When she coughs, it trickles down her chin.

She tries to drag Roan with her into the darkness, but her hand falls limp next to her.

The last thing she feels is an empty bullet shell underneath her elbow.

* * *

"She's coming back to us. Get her intubation out."

The first thing she feels when she wakes up is panic. Her body doesn't respond to her trying to rip the tube out herself. She gasps for breath when it finally slips out, leaving her throat raw and aching.

When she murmurs something, her mouth feels cotton dry.

"Nikita, can you hear us?"

Her foot twitches in response to a tiny little prick, and she sees a vague little light before her eyes roll back and complete stillness takes over again.

When she next wakes up, she is painfully aware of her head throbbing. Her skin itches where needles are nestled into her flesh to tap into her veins.

A gentle hand brushes over her forearm, movement coming to a halt when a rise in the heartbeat monitor shows Nikita's speeding up pace until it's a frantic rhythm that roars with warning signals to her treating doctors.

"Nikita, calm down."

Her head pounds with names, until one sinks in. _Jaden_.

"Where am I?" Her throat burns with the effort of speaking.

"You're in the hospital, sweetie." There's a choked back sob, insistent fingers digging into the sides of her wrist. "Don't force yourself. The doctor will be here any minute."

She is slipping back to sleep but she fights it, unable to move or open her eyes, but conscious enough to keep her mind from shutting down again.

A confident tapping of footsteps, the hand disappears with its warmth from her arm.

"She talked, Amanda. She used coherent speech! That's a good sign, right?"

"That's a great sign. Nikita?"

Her head moves towards the source of the voice she feels a strange connection to. Her eye lids stay firmly shut when she tries to move them, even if for just a little bit.

"Nikita, can you wiggle your toes for me?"

She does as she's told, feeling uncomfortably disconnected with her body, locked in her head with only a vague idea of everything below her neck.

"Do you feel this?"

"Y-Yeah."

"Can you follow the light for me please?"

When her eye is peeled open, light shining too bright, it's all the fight she has left and she floats away again.

She needs one more time to make it right. When she wakes up next, she is able to open her eyes by herself, and she needs a moment to adjust to the darkness.

In an arm chair by her side Jaden's curled into the arm rest, asleep with her head propped up on her arms. On the footrest of her bed sits an attractive woman, white lab coat around her slender shoulders.

"Good evening. Can you tell me your name, sweetheart?"

"Nikita Mears." Her voice croaks. Her throat feels like sandpaper rasping against her vocal chords.

Even though the lamp above her spreads light through the room her surroundings feel glum. It doesn't show of much visits; no flowers, no gifts, not even a bottle of water and a pair of glasses. Everything is bare and cold.

Nikita's body feels heavier because of it, gravity tauntingly pulling at her limbs.

The woman shifts closer, setting a hand on top of her sheets. Her smile doesn't falter, but her voice does drop an octave, drips with something achingly close to sympathy. "You have just woken up from a coma, Nikita. While it shouldn't be a higher priority than your recovery, I feel you should know... You've been unconscious for a very long time."

"How long?"

"...Six years."


	2. Chapter 2

**Tagging: **Nikita, Jaden, Amanda, Birkhoff, Michael.  
**Ships: **Mikita for now.  
**Rating: **M. (For all sorts of mature shenanigans; violence, death, dark themes and sexual hijinks.)

I'd like to apologize for the time you've had to wait for this chapter. The reception of this story has been truly amazing and the delay isn't because of a lack of inspiration but because I've been playing too many games-alas, you all deserve better.

And if you're waiting for Alex' first appearance, that'll be either in chapter three or four (I've not quite figured that out yet). Any guesses?

* * *

Three days have gone by, and a person waking from a coma is nothing like they show in the movies. They don't get up to just like that resume their lives, looking as if no time has passed. Nikita's lost virtually every ounce of muscle in her body, making her skin over bone. The six years of unconsciousness have rid her of the bags under her eyes, but have also left her pale and looking sickly.

None of that is too horrible though, considering a few weeks to months of physical therapy and days of soaking up the sun will get her back to what she once was...

It's her brain.

Three days after waking up for the first time, she's still struggling to stay conscious for longer than an hour, two hours tops, and she hasn't retained anything yet.

Every time she opens her eyes, Jaden or doctor Collins needs to tell her all over again what has happened.

The sight had been pretty much the same every time, though a varying state of puffy eyes when it came to Jaden. That, more than anything, startled Nikita more than anything. Though adopted and both from very different parents, they'd grown up together and seeing her sister in such a state of dishevelment pulled at her heart even if her mind screamed to be prioritized.

Today, however, Jaden is rummaging through a box in her lap when Nikita wakes up.

She props herself up, becoming aware of her surroundings within seconds—the tubes attached to her hand when she tries to rub the sleep out of her eyes, the slight angle of the top side of her bed, the smell of squeaky clean.

"Wuh?" she mutters through a dry throat and Jaden smiles, a subtle upwards tilt of her lips, and hands her a sippy cup of water.

After a few sips that make her throat feel less like a desert she sits up fully, trying to assess her situation. She sees flashes of a church, of a semi-melted off face, of twisted eyes being the last thing she saw—but when she moves a hand under the ridiculous hospital gown and feels across her abdomen she doesn't feel any bandages, no stitches. A thin scar next to her belly button is all that proves there was ever a bullet to begin with—how?

"Six years," Jaden mutters before Nikita can even voice her question.

It's like a punch to the chest. She feels like everything is suddenly closing in on her as the reality of that thought sinks in. _Six years_. How much has changed in those?

The investigations she ran cross her mind before _Michael_. Oh no. He has lived the past six years with his girlfriend in a coma...

"Where's Michael?" she asks, suddenly frantically concerned with comforting him before anything else. Jaden pushes her back into the bed when she tries to get out though, her hand gentle on her arm but capable of pinning her down nonetheless.

"I'll call him when your memory's not spotty anymore."

As a police detective, Nikita had been trained to look for signs of people lying. Jaden showed a few of them, which didn't per se mean she was _lying_—she could very well be _hiding something_, which was equally terrible.

"Jaden, you'd tell me if there was something I needed to know, right?" she probes.

Jaden merely nods, averting her gaze to the box she brought along. She starts rummaging through it again, pulling out a long strip of paper, four pictures printed from top to bottom.

Before Nikita even lays eyes on it she knows what it's from.

_"Come on, it'll be fun!" he'd said, tugging her into the booth. Birkhoff grinned as he flopped onto the tiny seat, squeezing his legs together to offer her a comfortable place to sit._

_"You're ridiculous."_

_His grin only widened at that, and he wrapped his arms around her waist when she finally sat down. She leaned to the side a little, just so she could look at him. "Are you sure you want to spend three dollars on this?"_

_"Six. We're printing it twice. Now shut up and duckface."_

They'd posed ridiculously for all four shots and then Nikita had tucked it into her wallet, where it would never leave until now, resting in her palms. The corners are worn and the ink of the pictures has faded a little over time, but she can still discern the curve of Birkhoff's attempted duck face.

That afternoon had been the first time she'd seen Birkhoff as more than just her partner at work. It could very well be considered the start of their friendship, and oh what a friendship it had become. While he would always be more Michael's friend than her own, he'd become someone she relied on.

A pillar of her life, he holds her up when she most needs it.

"I don't have any problems remembering this, Jae," Nikita says, her eyebrows crinkling together. Why...

No.

_No_.

"Jaden, where's Birkhoff?" Her lungs clench painfully when she meets her sister's eyes, seeing the flicker that confirms her thoughts. (Always the pessimist, it only goes to show how rightful her mentality is.) "_No_. How? When—"

The tears in her eyes blur away reality for her, but they don't take away the fact she hears the answer loud and clear—"He didn't survive the shooting."

Six years. Birkhoff has been dead six ye—_no_.

This can't be her reality.

She shakes her head wildly, shoulders shaking with the tears that fall. Every single one resonates within her with the venom of knowing that he's—

_No_.

"I'm sorry, Nikki," Jaden slips into bed with her, holding her to her chest. Nikita cries into her shoulder, trembling in her grieving as she wonders how karma turned on them like it had. "It sucks to see you in this much pain every time you wake up. You _never _remember."

Nikita chokes an "I'm sorry" through her sobs and she doesn't know if it's because she tries to place herself in Jaden's shoes or if she's talking to Birkhoff, wherever he is, trying to apologize for going down before she had the chance to protect him.

Jaden's fingers trail soothingly over her back and before her sobs have even subsided, Nikita gets something else slipped into her hand.

This time not a picture, but something that triggers a fond memory straight away regardless. She spins it around between her palms, praying "_Please no_."

_"I know it's not much of a present," Caroline had said when she'd given the box wrapped in purple gift paper, an elegant bow with curling tendrils taped to the top, "but I hope you'll put it to good use."_

_Nikita had been careful in pulling the bow of and pressing it to the side of her face before she'd torn off the paper. "Cece... You shouldn't have!"_

_She put the still-boxed-iPod on the table, hugging her mother so tightly the woman sputtered through her laugh._

She'd not had a care in the world that it was a first generation, second hand iPod that wasn't compatible with the apps everyone had fawned over at the time. It had given her a way out of reality when she needed it, contained as many songs as the 8GB had allowed her to, and had gotten her through high school exams and college studies, had been her companion during lengthy work-outs and in general had been the best present she'd ever gotten.

Caroline had always felt guilty that she didn't have the financial means to pamper her children, but neither Jaden nor Nikita had ever minded not growing up with luxury—they'd had the most amazing mother a teenage girl could wish for.

Jaden's warm eyes filled with tears too. "She would've been so happy to see you finally awake..."

"When?"

She sniffled. "Half a year ago. She... She got sick, Nikki. And all she could think of was how she was letting you down because she couldn't visit you anymore. She was her almost every day, and then she couldn't, and..."

A cry of utter agony ripples through Nikita's chest and she collapses against Jaden again, clinging to her.

It's not hard to find a reason why her brain decides not to remember. The knowledge that she woke up to a world that no longer has Birkhoff, no longer has Cece...

"One more," Jaden whispers. She wipes at her cheeks and reaches over, pulling the box towards her.

Nikita spots a few items from her closet at her apartment, books and other stuff—stuff to keep her busy while in the hospital, without a doubt. Which item is important to—

_No_.

"Not Michael," she whimpers. Her heart shatters at the sight of Michael's Harvard hoodie.

_"You are white and privileged." Nikita chuckled, tugging at the front of Michael's hoodie. Harvard stood in big, white letters across dark red. "Harvard huh?"_

_"Harvard. Is this offensive? I mean, because you decided not to go to college?"_

_"Are you kidding? It's hot. My boyfriend went to an Ivy League college."_

She had leaned up to press a kiss to his mouth and it had spiraled out of her control, ending with her wearing his hoodie—_only_ his hoodie, claiming it now hers for the rest of times.

"He's alive."

Nikita's breathes come in sputtering puffs, the relief tangible among the pain that seems to come from everywhere all at once.

"But it's not my place to tell you. If you remember, I'll call him for you, okay?"

She nods mutely, blinking through thick tears. This is all so much to take in, and everything hurts. She surrounds herself with the warmth of Jaden's body, trying to stifle her hiccupping, her wrenched sobbing, and ends up releasing pathetic wails that say so much.

_Please let this be a nightmare._

_Please let this be a joke_—it would be a terrible, sick joke but maybe one day she would be able to laugh with it.

_Please let Birkhoff be alive, and let Cece be alive._

But when she sinks back against her pillows, wishing for sleep to take over and it to wipe away everything she just heard, she finds it impossible to fall asleep. Her eyes ache with how much she's been crying in the past few minutes, and she blinks them rapidly.

Every time her eyes are closed she sees it—life as she knew it. God, the last thing she remembers saying to Michael is a nasty insult right before she slammed the door shut and went to work to get shot. And she complained about it to Birkhoff. She disappointed Caroline on the last day she saw her.

The loss crushes everything inside of her.

She'll never be able to make it up to Caroline, never make her proud by trying to improve her quality of life.

She'll never be able to make Birkhoff godfather of the offspring that's undoubtedly coming one day.

The only thing she can patch is with Michael, but where is he? What's the story she needs to hear?

* * *

She slipped back to slumber before Jaden even noticed.

Nikita wakes up wishing she didn't remember.


End file.
